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Steven Foster's avatar

For me Theodore Roosevelt's autobiography has exactly this as he recounts his asthma and physical challenges early in life. His is father played a significant part in helping him over come those challenges in a loving way. Something that seems difficult at least for me to imagine in our modern age.

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Conor McCammon's avatar

This puts me in mind of a lot of feminist academic philosophy that I read in university, which often noted how much more men tend to see their bodies as either a tool or as simply an unconsidered extension of their ‘selves’, as opposed to women who are forced constantly into an awareness of their body as an object in space which is open to observation. I wonder if an increase in male insecurity is a direct result of considering the body as an object in this way. When I feel best in my body, least insecure, it is because me and my body have become one thing, a purposeful and natural unfolding of agency. When I stop and ‘Look’ at my body however, I begin to feel things which I am sure every woman is familiar with. My crooked nose, the unflattering shapelessness of my arms, my sweaty hands, the placement of a freckle, my height. A body, perhaps, cannot be a marble statue and a vital, breathing thing at the same time. And therein lies our problem. We want to be both a crystalline perfection and a functioning being, and the former is an impossibility.

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